


The Farther I Fall, I'm Beside You

by frenchpirate (Whiskey_n_speed)



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 21:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/872357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whiskey_n_speed/pseuds/frenchpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank works at an office in the weekdays, answering angry emails in a button up shirt and looks like he has himself somewhat together, but in the weekends his life comes crashing down on him and he becomes a drunken, depressed insomniac who has too much sex with strangers and nothing to keep him sane. At least that's what he is until his boss' wierd, artsy brother shows up on borrowed time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Farther I Fall, I'm Beside You

The task had been so simple; don’t fall in love. Just don’t do get attached and everything will be fine. 

Hell, I had barely even believed in such things as love and commitment beforehand, everything had been a blur of alcohol, senseless fucking in nasty bathrooms stalls at Jones Bar, the only lousy gay bar I knew of around here which was also more than enough, and lonely nights staring at a blank ceiling and feeling the contrast of my body heat next to the cold half of my bed that was clearly too wide for my love life. 

Nights like that had become obligated every single weekend to keep me sane, and yet that was probably also what was driving me slowly off the cliff and into madness. None of it really mattered though, when I returned Monday morning, back in a button up shirt with my sleeves rolled down and a comforting numbness as I opened email after email at my desk and gave every single one of them the same, sugarcoated reply. Because I knew it worked, after working here for 5 years straight, I’d gotten the business tricks all the way under my skin. 

And I would tell Mikey about it, sometimes, since he gradually was becoming the only person I talked to on even a weekly basis. Because he knew how it bothered me that apparently someone to warm up the other side of the bed was too much to ask for, for someone like me. I’d even suggested throwing out the bed and buying a single one, but he’d told me that was just straight up pessimistic and he was probably right. He understood a lot, Mikey, even my half-heartedly hidden hatred for this nine-to-five job behind a messy desk where the only one to talk to was him, though it was the man himself that hired me back in the day. He was just built for a stressful office-job and I wasn’t, as he so beautifully expressed it when he would enter my office in the morning and I was yelling furiously at my monitor or sitting resignedly with my head in my hands and growling tiredly at everything he said or simply just asleep in my chair. 

I liked having Mikey as a boss, or as much boss as he was to me when we basically shared more stories about or sexual shenanigans than actual conversations about work, but I was just tired of everything about how my life looked at the moment. 

I had been so full of rage and creativity and energy and what the fuck not back in high school, I had been storming around doing everything all the time and I had been so sure I was going to be a musician and I had actually been pretty talented not to mention passionate about my hot white Gibson I’d bough for every penny I owned when I was 14. And then something had happened, or more precisely, college had happened. And then again not, because I dropped out halfway through and moved here and that had been it, apparently, I was settled for the rest of my life. Mikey had hired me to do the dirty jobs he didn’t want to do himself in this steady two-man company he had. The first two years or so I hadn’t even had any idea what the product we offered actually were, I just opened angry mails where people yelled at me and I had to calm them down and offer refunds for money I didn’t know they’d paid and stuff like that. Okay, it was probably something about insurances or VAT’s or something else with a lot of numbers that Mikey was good at since he went to business school and me not so much since I didn’t, but it paid the rent so who was I to complain.

‘’’

It had been another one of those nights, but then again every night off had become one of those nights, where I’d laid awake until dawn, staring. Thinking. And it wasn’t even like I had a lot to think about, nothing new ever really happened here, but my mind was never a peaceful place either. 

It was times like these I wish I’d never sold the guitar, I could become all sentimental and sad and miss it like fuck, but I’d had just taken up too much space for something I’d stopped using when I was at college and it gave some good money to pay off some loans. But nights like these I remembered how calming and blissful it had been to sit at night at the end of my bed, curled around the smooth wooden surface and sliding my hands over the neck, and how life-assuring it felt to create noise. Even if it had been very quiet noise because it was 3 in the morning and my parents had been asleep upstairs, it had none the less been noise, and I had been making it. I guess I just missed the feeling of doing something individually, and as far as Mikey would try and understand that when I told him about it in the morning, he didn’t really get it. Because he was more than satisfied with his life as it was, his suburban house, on-and-off girlfriends and job that didn’t require much adaption into change. He never needed that extra something that I seemed to need, without really knowing what the something was. 

I had turned op red-eyed, hung over and partly pissed off, partly feeling really powerless and in not control over my life after a rough night of drinking, then fucking, then thinking about drinking and fucking, because that was practically all I did. Frank Iero; average office worker throughout the weekdays, horny, depressed alcoholic with heartaches in the weekends. 

I dumped down on my chair and felt my eyes almost falling shut as I turned on my computer and of course the amount of emails in my inbox had tripled since Friday afternoon. It was and would always be a mystery to me how Mikey managed to piss this many people off during a single week. But of course he didn’t have to care since I was the one to take the rage afterwards, but I sincerely hoped he was ashamed of the pile of shit I had to clean up sometimes. Maybe that was why the door between our offices was closed today. It was usually always open unless Mikey saw a customer face to face instead of talking over the phone, or had some personal business to take care of. And by personal business I mean being so hung over he needed to take a nap over his desk or jerking off watching porn on his computer. Sometimes the thought struck me that we were like a couple of high-schoolers forced to do some project together which none of us really took seriously more than the owner of a company and his loyal coworker, because while he anyways was doing whatever in his office, I saw the chance to lean back and close my eyes for a second. Or, more like until he was done doing whatever he was doing and would come out and wake me up. 

As predicted, the door to his office opened and tore me out of the sleep I had happily embraced and needed since I didn’t get any of it last night. But it wasn’t exactly Mikey that came out of the office, it was another guy that I hadn’t seen before, and honestly didn’t look much like any other customer we’d had before. The few ones I’d seen in here had always been salesmen-looking types in business suits with briefcases and patent leather shoes. Basically everything this guy wasn’t, but he definitely caught my eye with his weird looks. 

He wasn’t as tall as Mikey, but taller than me, which doesn’t take a lot either, and looked like he hadn’t showered for a week or something. His hair was dark and sort of long and really messy and probably made him look even paler than he already was, which went great with the dark shadows around his eyes, at least if you went for the vampire-look. He squinted a little when exiting Mikeys office that also usually was slightly darker than the rest of the apartment-like workplace, and it made him look even more like he lived in a coffin or something. 

He nodded and smiled at me as he walked by, and then Mikey followed him out the office with a stack of paperwork in his hands. I swore to God if he made me do that besides all the emails I might strangulate him.  
He didn’t give me the papers though, he just rolled his eyes at me. “Stop sleeping at work”

“Like you’re any better” I murmured and sat up straight, putting my hands at the keyboard and pretending I was going to do something. “Is it really that obvious?”

“Dude, you were drooling” Mikey said and the tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth told me it wasn’t any big deal, though he probably had to make it seem like it in front of the other guy that oddly enough hadn’t left yet. He was just awkwardly standing over by the door, as if waiting for something. 

I shot another glance at him and decided that he probably wasn’t a customer. His whole appearance was just so different from anything I’d seen in the office before, all the way from his worn out sneakers, to his paint splattered jeans and the saggy hoodie that wasn’t zipped all the way up so I got a glimpse of a colorful band logo on the t-shirt underneath. He was biting his nails, and his hands were covered in the same blue paint as his jeans, and his fingers were long and slender with chipped down nails. He looked weird. 

“Who is that anyways?” I asked and made a gesture towards the guy. “Your boyfriend?” 

“Dude” Mikey snapped at me, not loud enough so that the guy would hear him and he had a slightly offended expression. “My brother. Gerard”

“Oh, didn’t know you had one of those” I said and nodded at Gerard who sent back a sort of awkward smile. Mikey went over and handed him the papers that, thank God, wasn’t for me and they had a muffled conversation that I couldn’t hear by the door, before Mikey went out of it and left Gerard standing in my office. 

“Where did he go?” I asked and Gerard shrugged. 

“Dunno. He had to print something; he said he’ll be right back. Do you have a coffee maker?” he said and I nodded, got up from my chair and headed out in the tiny kitchen that was attached to the rest of the office. Our printer was broken so every time we had to print something we had to go to floors up and ask the realtor that had office upstairs if we could borrow his. The realtor was sort of friendly and let us use it but he smelled weird and his office was incredibly messy, so fortunately Mikey did most of the printing around here. 

I made coffee for the both of us and he hungrily accepted his mug after putting the stack of papers on the tiny piece of counter next to the coffee machine. “So, what do you do?” I asked mostly as a conversation starter. He looked from up from the mug at me, as if he’d forgotten I was there for a second. 

“Art. Painting. Drawing. Stuff like that” he explained with a serious nod, taking a sip of his coffee. “I’m not doing anything right now though, I’m moving to Europe in about a month, so I don’t really have time to start up any project, I just have some time to kill” 

“Wow. Europe” I said, sort of fascinated. I’d never been there. To me, it was this foreign place where rich people went on vacation and they ate weird food and it was close to Asia, it wasn’t somewhere you just went like that. 

“Yeah” Gerard just agreed and went back to eyeing his coffee. “So I’m staying with Mikey until I leave because I got my apartment sold before I’d counted on it”  
“Where’d you live before?” 

“New York” he said with a quick smile. 

“Wow, that’s cool. And Europe is totally cool too. I’ve never really been anywhere but here actually. It’s extremely boring to never go any cool places” I said with a shrug, and the feeling of wanting to do something else welled up in me again, and I had a short flashback to last night and shivered. My life was fucking Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, I felt almost disgusted by the way I acted when I was out, as long as I was here with Mikey and dressed in shirts and clean pants and doing respectable work, sort of, and I felt sick about how repetitive my days at work was when I was out in the weekends being a brainless drunk who got way too philosophic in the dark of my lonely bedroom. 

“So why don’t you?” Gerard asked and dragged me out of my angsty thoughts. 

“Don’t what?” I said and raised my eyebrows. I’d sort of lost track of the conversation when I’d disappeared into my mind. 

“Go cool places?” he asked, looking genuinely confused and I took a second out to think about the question. It often occurred to me that I could just quit and leave and go somewhere else, but I never did it, I didn’t have intentions of ever doing it. I guessed I was just too much of a pretentious coward, just like I’d quitted playing guitar and dreaming of being a rockstar and gone off to college instead. Maybe I had just gotten stuck in the rhythm of doing whatever was expected of me. My parents were proud of me as I were, but then again they didn’t know about the weekly orgies of everything they wouldn’t be proud of that I went through to get out my anger and loneliness and anxiousness and restlessness and whatever else I build up inside me during the week. 

“I – don’t know” I started thoughtfully, squinting at Gerard who still looked at me, the interested look in his bright eyes looking honest. “I guess I got stuck here or something” 

“How do you get ‘stuck’? It’s not like your feet is glued to the floor or anything.” Gerard said and at first I thought he was mocking me, but his voice was still the same as before. And his face still looked just as wondering as before, so I supposed he was still completely serious. 

“No but-“ I started but didn’t really know how to end the sentence. I didn’t end it either because Mikey slammed the door open in that instant and he had an exhausted look on his face. 

“The realtor wasn’t there, I stood there knocking like an idiot for like 10 good minutes, we’ll do it tomorrow” he said and Gerard nodded silently. It hit me how I didn’t think I had ever seen two related people less alike that Mikey and Gerard. Mikey was tall and skinny and had very streamlined fashion sense and control of his hair and looked like exactly what he was; a somewhat single businessman in his late twenties. And Gerard was just, well, everything opposite of that. I couldn’t even tell which of them was older, because in the few minutes I’d spent with Gerard he’d both seemed childish and experienced. And Mikey was just – Mikey. I’d known him for years now and he’d never really fascinated me in the way his brother seemed to do instantly. He was just there, at his desk, listening to my endless rants about my lousy life and loading more work on me meanwhile. 

'''

I found out Gerard was older the next day, when we sat talking again while Mikey tried to catch the realtor while he was in his office. He was 31, and for some reason that kept on returning to me. First of all he didn’t seem 31 at all, I would’ve actually ended up guessing Mikey was older and Gerard wasn’t more than in his mid-twenties, tops. But it wasn’t as much that as it was the fact that he was past 30 and still he just moved to Europe as it was no big deal that caught my attention. 

And as I was in my bed that night, giving up on falling asleep at all, it made me think that just because I’d chosen college over music back when I was 18; it wasn’t exactly too late to do something else. Not necessarily playing guitar, but something that balanced out my life a little more, maybe get out of this town, maybe find someone to share a bed with and stop overthinking so fucking much at night and fall asleep for a change. 

Of course, all this hopeful thinking vanished as dew in the sun when Friday night arrived and Mr. Hyde took over my body, completely making me forget all the thinking Gerard had made me do, besides all the regular thinking. 

I was standing in front of the mirror in my little apartment, eyeing myself and checking that everything was okay for the night. And it was; I was wearing my ridiculously low cut, white V-neck that would get half-transparent when I got sweaty on the dancefloor, easily showing off every single tattoo I had on my torso and tight jeans with a waist so low you could probably spot my pubes if you looked long enough. My hair was stiff from gel and my eyes lined up with black kohl. I looked like a slut. I was a slut. Great. 

And only a few hours later I found myself completely empty of thoughts, as I easily preferred over all the shit my battlefield of a brain normally dealt with, which was probably why I always ended up here in the first place. I was pinned against the door of last stall in the row in the nauseating bathrooms of the bar, lightly banging my head against the hard plastic behind me every time the guy underneath me thrusted into me. 

I was so fucking drunk and this was so fucking bad sex and I may or may not even have fucked that guy before without remembering, but none of that really mattered right now, just like the future and my dumb life choices that always seemed to haunt me didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was that he reached down and got his hand on my dick before I got a cramp in my legs from clinging on to him. 

And he did, fucking finally. I shot my load over his shirt which made him swear a little at me, but I couldn’t care less, I’d had my climax and all the shit came crawling back in my head now and I really just wanted him to leave me alone. 

He pulled out of me and shifted uncomfortably as I zipped up my pants. Bad, bad sex. I was so fucking drunk and I really just wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but that probably wouldn’t happen so maybe I’d just cry a bit. Yeah, I sometimes cried after getting fucked, when the dude had gone away and I was empty and alone and back to myself again, the tears just sort of came and I don’t really know why, I just let it happen and felt pathetic and stupid and used and lonely. 

“Hm, you wanna get a ride back to my place baby, continue the fun?” the guy sleazed into my ear and licked my neck sloppily, obviously trying to be sexy but really just making my stomach turn itself inside out. Oh my fucking God, how did my life end up like this? Even in my shitfaced state he was nowhere near attractive or interesting or anything else but another dumb decision. 

“Not really” I said dismissively and pushed him lightly away. He immediately frowned and his face turned cold. 

“Whatever, bitch” he snapped and pushed me out of the way so he could get out of the door. He was gone before I could think another one of my filthy thoughts. And a few moments after I heard the door between the dim bathroom and the bar outside open and close, a short second of loud music hitting me, the tears came, just as expected. 

I dumped down on the floor, it didn’t really make any difference whether I sat there or on the toilet seat, both were equally nasty and covered in everything I didn’t want to get on me, but not that I cared anyways, when did I ever fucking care? I put my arms around my legs and hid my face, just sitting there curled up in a ball bawling my eyes out while my life came crashing down upon me and it wasn’t even a big deal, this happened every weekend and I was just drunk and in serious lack of sleep and possibly also love. Everything was just so damn miserable, and I also looked miserable when I got up from the floor God knows how much later. I caught my own eyes in the mirror and I still looked like a whore. A whore with red eyes and smeared eyeliner. A sad whore with a sad whore-life. 

I walked home, swaying and tumbling and not really in control of my feet, and as soon as I was done fiddling with my keys and got myself into the apartment I collapsed on the bed, only to get up a few minutes later to go and vomit in the sink since all my senses were so fucked up I couldn’t even manage to hit the toilet bowl. I really didn’t want to clean that up right now, but then again I really didn’t want my bathroom to smell like puke tomorrow when I probably felt even worse than I did right now if possible. 

I got out some detergents and a sponge and I hate everything about everything so fucking much. 

I slept a little that night and when I woke up my head felt like a marching band was currently rehearsing on the inside of it. I lay in bed for a while, staring obnoxiously at the ceiling but it felt like it was going to make me go mad after a while so I got up, made a pot of coffee and lit a cigarette. Life sucked. 

It was only Saturday, which meant there were another couple of shitfaced nights before I could go back to work and pretend I had control over my life for another five days, and I didn’t really feel like my body was ready for that. 

My salvation came in a phone call from Mikey around dinnertime. I had just started dressing up for another slutty night, trying to look like someone who didn’t rather want to turn my insides out and bury myself than go out and get laid. I was applying eyeliner with a shaking hand when the phone started vibrating on the bed where I’d dropped it earlier.  
I picked it up after finishing one eye. I looked like a panda, since the amount of eyeliner I wore increased each day I went out, as I looked more and more hung over. “Mikeyway, what’s up?” 

“Dude, I need your help” he said and I felt the urge to sigh creep onto me. It better not be some angry customer that had shown up yelling and now I had to deal with them because Mikey didn’t want to. That had happened a couple of times before and I was never forgiving Mikey for it. 

“What’s the issue?” I said and tried to sound cooler than I felt. 

“I have a really fucking hot date tonight, and I am so going to bring her back to my place, which is sort of hard when my geeky brother is occupying half of it” he explained quickly and I rolled my eyes. I’d never understood his need to bring his one night stands back to his apartment, since I’d always just done them on the spot, but then again Mikey had his life a little more together than I had. Maybe that was the reason. 

“So you need to borrow my place while I’m out or what?” I asked and Mikey snorted in laughter. 

“Fuck no, you never clean and your bathroom always smells vaguely like vomit” he grinned and I sighed loudly, though he was sort of right. The last time I’d touched a vacuum was probably in college when my roommates forced me to. And I did puke a lot in places where I wasn’t supposed to puke. Sadly. 

“So, what then?” I said tiredly. 

“Just – can’t you like, entertain Gerard for the evening, take him out or something” Mikey almost begged and that was sort of funny. I felt a half-smile curl on my face and well, Gerard was cool, and spending the evening with him would probably be better than whatever was waiting for me out in the city. But then again the little amount of time I’d spent with him had already made my brain almost have a meltdown from thinking. 

“You don’t pay me nearly enough a month to take your brother out because you need to get laid” I joked and this time Mikey sighed. 

“Like I don’t know how much it costs to get as wasted as you get every weekend” 

“Clearly you’re not pretty enough for people to buy you drinks” I smirked but then Mikey got that pleading tone of voice and it was almost embarrassing through the amusement how much he was thinking with his dick. 

“Fuck you Frank” he uttered desperately and I couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Fine, I’ll talk to your brother. Do you want me to, like, pick him up or something?” I asked, still giggling. 

“Whatever you want, just be out of my place sometime soon” he said and hung up shortly after, thanking me cordially for wanting to spend time with his brother since he apparently really didn’t. 

'''

Next thing I knew I was crying again, but this time I wasn’t alone on a bathroom floor that would stain my clothes permanently with things I didn’t want to know about, this time it was on my own couch, leaning into Gerards shoulder while he gently had his arm around me, caressing my should and lightly hushing my sobs. I had no idea how he could even stand me, I could far from stand myself right now, and I no idea how we ended up like this either. 

Okay, I sort of had an idea how I ended up like this, and it was basically because I’m an unstable asshole and Gerard is about the most awesome person I’d ever met. I had driven over to Mikeys place and picked him up, and we’d had dinner at some half-cheap Indian restaurant, and I’d found out that Gerard was way more fascinating than I’d first guessed. And when he first started talking you couldn’t get him to stop, but that was totally okay because I didn’t want him to stop either. 

He knew so much about art and travelling and comic books and music and poetry that it just made me feel like I was a little kid listening to someone tell me about all the wonderful things that life had in store for me, and simultaneously I felt so stupid because all I knew was how to strum a few chords on a guitar I’d sold a long time ago and how to calm angry businessmen down and how to get possibly fucks to buy me drinks at gay bars.  
So Gerard talked a lot through the entire meal and I listened a lot, and he waved his hands around excitedly and accidentally knocked over his glass of wine and I just sat and stared at him in awe. 

After eating I suggested we went home and watched a movie since it wasn’t really late yet and Mikey definitely wasn’t done with his chick if he even was home by now, and Gerard had thought it was a great idea, and it had been until I remembered that I didn’t actually own any DVD’s. Mostly because whenever I watched TV which was basically every weekday evening ever, I just wallowed in self-pity on the couch with a bag of chips while zapping through channel after channel of crappy sitcoms, not really paying attention to anything because I was busy feeling sorry for myself. 

So we settled on the couch anyways and Gerard snatched the remote out of my hand and started looking through the channels for a movie or an episode of some sitcom that was less crappy than everything else they showed on TV. 

“Aww, E.T” Gerard smiled as he settled on one of the channels where the movie was already more than halfway through. 

“No I don’t think we should watch that” I said hastily and tried to get the remote control back and Gerard probably sensed the sheer panic in my voice because he laughed and kept the remote out of my reach. God damn being small. 

“Do you cry?” he grinned and gave me a piercing look and for a second I was startled by just how bright his eyes was and he was probably looking right through me, reading me like an open book. 

“Every single time” I said honestly because I didn’t really feel capable of lying to him when he looked at me like that. It was weird, how he got to me so quickly, kind of intimidating, but in a nice way. I wanted to know more about him, hear him talk about all the things he knew and his painting and how a rather large gallery in France wanted to publish his work permanently and that was why he was leaving to Europe. 

“So do I” he admitted, still grinning and kept the remote away from me and then I gave up and sat back down next to him, turning my eyes to the screen, though they darted back to Gerard now and then. I’d found out he’d been wearing working clothes the day I’d first met him and when he went out like this he wore leather jackets and tights jeans and boots and looked really damn good actually. It’d also made me feel a little better since I was still sort of dressed up to go out drinking, not wearing the barely-existing white t-shirt though, I’d changed into a regular black shirt but I’d kept on the jeans and the eyeliner. 

And the ending came and of course I was sobbing loudly over a kid’s movie and I looked over at Gerard and he was also teary-eyed but not nearly as much as me, which only made me feel slightly less embarrassed. 

“Aw” he just said when he turned his head and looked at me, pressing his lips together in a bawling smile. It was really ridiculous but I wasn’t complaining when he put his arm around me and we sat like that for a while, me crying into his shoulder and him holding me. 

But then the thing happened that always happened when I’d started crying, I couldn’t stop again because it didn’t matter that I’d started sobbing over an alien going home because I would always end up sobbing over everything that was wrong with my life. And when the movie was long over and I still had my face pressed into Gerards t-shirt, a wet spot of tears spreading on it, he looked at me with a concerned frown. 

“Frank, are you okay?” he said worriedly and there was just something about him that made me not want to lie, it really was intimidating, so I just shook my head as much as I could when I sat like I did and he squeezed me a bit tighter. “What’s the matter?” 

He sounded slightly surprised and I couldn’t blame him, if I had been in his situation I probably wouldn’t have still been sitting here, I would probably just have gotten out as fast as I could and left this emotional freak alone. But he just fucking asked me what was wrong and apparently intended on listening, but the thing was I didn’t say anything. I didn’t really know what to say, except for the truth and I found that rather terrifying. 

I mean, what was I even supposed to say; I don’t sleep at night, I cry instead because I feel like I’m wasting my life, I go out and drink myself senseless every weekend and let myself get fucked by strangers and break down afterwards, I hide it all that in the everyday impression that I’m your brother’s well-functioning co-worker because I won’t completely admit that I’m wasting my life and I don’t know what to do about it. Yeah, that wouldn’t freak him out and get him out the door before I could even dive down in my basin of self-pity. 

So I kept quiet and maybe Gerard got it, whatever it was that I was expressing because he seemed to be able to do that, or else he just didn’t know what to do and decided to keep quiet too. At some point he rocked me back and forth a little and I actually stopped crying faster than usual because there was something comforting about him sitting here, even though it was awkward as fuck and he would probably go home and tell Mikey what a weirdo I was and then they would both give me strange looks. 

“You should get some sleep” Gerard said to me after God knows how long, I had stopped crying, finally, and he pulled away from the sort of hug we’d been sitting in. 

“I don’t really sleep a lot” I mumbled and that was probably a violent understatement. I almost didn’t sleep at all by now, I was running entirely on caffeine and self-loathing and bad sex. 

“Come on” he said and then he did something that made me freeze for a second and then shutter; he kissed my forehead, where my hair met my skin and his lips were soft and warm and it was like something inside me went up in flames and my whole body was heated for a moment. It was a really fucking long time since anyone had kissed me like that, innocent and caring and without any creepy ulterior motives. 

Then he got up from the couch and walked over to the door to my bedroom, I followed him because what else was I supposed to do. I felt confused and dizzy and really, really exhausted and I really wanted to sleep but it just wasn’t that simple. 

He grabbed my arm and guided me around him so I was next to the bed, and then he pushed me lightly so I stumbled and felt backwards onto it. “Go to sleep” he said with a little smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back at him though my eyes hurt from being swollen and my chest felt too tight. “I’ll see myself out” 

And by his last words it was like my ribcage closed even more around my insides. It had been so nice to have him comforting me, and the thought of being left alone like this wasn’t very appealing in any way.  
So I dropped all sorts of dignity, if I hadn’t already and begged “Please stay” and Gerard turned around in the doorway and looked down at me. 

“If you tell me what’s wrong, I will” he promised and I nodded. I would tell him anything at this point to not have him leave me, because if he did chances of me crying again and not getting any sleep was ridiculously high. 

‘’’

When I woke up I was really confused, mostly because I didn’t have a hangover and I didn’t feel like puking and that was really out of the ordinary. Then I remembered what had happened last night and I smiled vaguely to myself. I turned over and saw Gerard lying on the other side of the bed on his chest, face turned away from me and snoring lightly.  
It was weird that he’d stayed just because I asked him to, maybe he’d felt obligated to do so when I was as sad as I was, but he didn’t seem like the type who would do something like that just because he felt like he was supposed to. 

He had listened to me last night, like, really listened. Not like Mikey did when I told him about my weekends, he just nodded and grinned and carried on with the work. Gerard had looked at me the whole time, seeming interested and asked questions that I sometimes didn’t really know the answer to. 

And I had told him everything there was to tell and I had cringed at myself at some points and at other times I’d teared up but Gerard had just laid next to me and listened to everything, and that warm feeling from when he’d kissed my head returned and it was so strange in a very good way that I didn’t wake up to a cold half of the bed.  
It was also weird to have slept more than a couple of hours in a row, but the presence of another person had helped with that too, and maybe also lightening my heart by telling about all the things that had bothered me. 

The problem with this was that when I sat up, tangled in my sheets and still dressed, I looked over at Gerard, his body rising and falling slowly as he breathed and realized that I already liked him a lot more than I was supposed to and I had known him for a week. 

We didn’t talk much that morning, I made us coffee and he hugged me goodbye before heading back to Mikeys place, but it wasn’t awkward like it had been the night before. And I really hoped Gerard didn’t feel like it was either, but then again I didn’t think he found much awkward, that was probably just me.

‘’’

I didn’t go out on Sunday either, though I usually did which just made me feel more like shit on Monday morning. But I just didn’t feel like going, it was like I had gotten some of all the fury inside me out, and there wasn’t such a big need for approval in mindless fucking now that Gerard had listened to me. 

It was possibly also because I rather than being mindlessly fucked by a stranger would have Gerard kiss me again, but that thought alienated me. I felt like I took advantage of his helpfulness by wanting to kiss him, and I hadn’t wanted to genuinely kiss anyone for years. I hadn’t been in love or even had a crush on anyone for so long, simply because I didn’t know anyone I could be emotionally attracted to. The only person I stayed around for longer periods of time than half an hour was Mikey, and kissing him was about as appealing to me as kissing the doorframe. 

I’d had a girlfriend once, back in college and then a boyfriend later on, but none of it had worked out and then I slipped into the routine of going out like I did. It wasn’t even because it had been unhealthy relationships or the breakups had been utterly horrible. It just hadn’t worked out and I just couldn’t handle that for whatever reason, so I’d stopped dating completely. 

So maybe it was just because Gerard was new and friendly didn’t just talk to me because he wanted to stick his dick in me, and I had been sober every time I’d talked to him that I liked him this way, but then again he fascinated me in this breathtaking way, the way he talked so passionately by art and didn’t seem bound to wherever he was like I did, and how excited he still seemed about life, and basically the way he was everything opposite of me. I wanted to spend more time with him, just listening to him and keep on letting him overwhelm me with his knowledge and experience and passion. 

I did get to spend more time with him within the next week, because apparently he got bored in Mikeys apartment and started hanging around in the office talking to us and there were both upsides and downsides to that. Upsides were that me and Gerard had a lot of conversations, and Mikey told me at some point while Gerard was outside smoking that he liked talking to me because I seemed so interested in what he had to say, unlike Mikey who wasn’t really into his whole artsy lifestyle. Downsides were that I seemed to like him better and better for every day that passed. 

And it wasn’t that it felt bad or anything, because I suspected Gerard of already knowing I was growing feelings for him, because sometimes he just gave me that look, and I felt like he read my mind, and it didn’t help that he started hugging me before we went home in the afternoon, long and tightly, and doodled little figures on napkins and business cards that were laying around, leaving them with small messages or quotes for me to find. It didn’t help at all and honestly I was scared shitless because of it. 

I definitely was a horrible idea to start liking him, not to mention growing attached to him, since I knew very well that he was leaving the fucking continent for good in another couple of weeks and then I was probably never going to see him again, and another thing to feel bad for myself over wasn’t really what I needed. But my stupid brain and my stupid heart and my stupid feelings didn’t seem to get that. 

‘’’

And then I kissed Gerard. 

Mikey had asked if I wanted to spend the evening with him again, it was the weekend after he’d slept at my place and I would bet everything I owned that Mikey thought we had been getting it on that night though we both honestly denied that. 

But since spending time with Gerard had become my new favorite activity, of course I said yes, I’d prefer talking to him over going out anytime, and this time we ordered pizza and ate in my couch. 

“No teary movies this time, I promise” Gerard said and I agreed eagerly. It would be nice if the mood was a little more cheery now than it had been last weekend. So he found a retransmission of one of the old Star Wars movies and even though it was a good half hour in, it didn’t matter because Gerard had watched them all so many times he could basically recite every single line, so he filled me in, and the rest of the movie I just sat and listened in awe to all the geeky things he knew about them, and it didn’t bother me at all that I rarely paid attention to the actual movie because I was busy being fascinated by Gerard. 

“What?” he asked with a grin we he caught me staring. 

“Nothing. You’re just-“ I started but didn’t really know how to end that sentence. I didn’t know what Gerard was, because he was so many things that if I even started thinking about it I would probably get dizzy. He was interesting for once, he was smart and funny and really pretty when a smile broke on his round face or he got a spark in his eyes revealing that he was excited, he was kind and he was so caring towards me. He hadn’t known me for very long and he had already heard my depressing life story and it didn’t seem like he thought any worse of me because of that. He just accepted it and continued talking about painters he admired and movies he didn’t like the remakes of. He was just so Gerard. 

“I’m just what?” he smiled and cocked his head, looking at me and once again I felt like he was reading me like an open book. 

“You’re really you” I finally said and I guess that was the best description of Gerard my vocabulary could muster. Maybe it was just because he was so unashamedly himself, and so completely honest all the time that had just made me go head over heels for him. 

“Thanks, I guess” Gerard said with a laugh and I couldn’t help but let my eyes dart to his mouth. I liked him an awful lot when he grinned, his teeth were small and white and I could see every single one of them which was really adorable, and the skin next to his eyes wrinkled a little and his lips were smooth and a little wet and I had felt them on my skin once before and I was dying to feel them again. 

“Can I kiss you?” I asked out of nowhere and I really wasn’t planning on saying that because there was no need to fuck my feelings up any more that absolutely necessary. But I’d said them, and there was a moment where they were just hanging in the air, making me cringe inside because I was so fucking stupid and Gerard looked at me with a surprised look on his face. 

“Wha-“ he started but before he could say anything, I leaned over and pressed my mouth against his, that was still hanging slightly open in the middle of a word. I just couldn’t let him turn me down until I’d tried kissing him like this. After that he could call me weird and get out and never talk to me again and that would probably also be for the better. But first I wanted this moment where I clenched my fingers in the air a couple of times and then settled my hand on his shoulder and entwined my fingers in his shirt as my lips was on his and I fucking finally felt what they were like on mine. 

And they felt exactly like I’d imagined, because sometimes I shamefully had, they were soft and gentle and made the heat in my inside break loose again. Gerard was frozen for a second, just letting me move against him, and for a second a tiny and very hopeful part of me thought he was going to kiss back, and I almost let my tongue daringly slide into his mouth, but then he pulled back and looked at me with serious eyes. I felt my stomach drop and my palms break into sweat, this was so dumb. I was so dumb. 

“This is-“ he started and took a deep breath. “This is a really bad idea”

Like I didn’t fucking know how shitty an idea it was, there was endless reasons why it wasn’t a good idea, but when had I ever in my life been the one to make smart and reasonable decisions; never ever. So I just blurted out “I like you. A lot” and felt like a freshman with a crush on a popular cheerleader again. And that hadn’t gone very well by the way. 

Gerard sighed and his hand found its way to my face and cupped my jaw, his fingers running lightly over my skin. He got his index and middle finger tangled in my hair and he kept on tilting his head and looking at me and I really couldn’t figure out what he was thinking. He really did make me feel like a teenager again, without any clue what the world was about and how to act around him and how to deal with any of the things going on inside me, like I wasn’t horrible enough at that already. 

“You do?” he just asked softly and I could feel my eyes widen and I nodded eagerly. I did like him. A lot. More than a lot. I wasn’t going to say I was in love with him, but I probably was though, creepy and rushed as it sounded. I just felt so happy and light-hearted and oblivious to all the shit I normally dealt with when I was around him. And I hadn’t found a single thing about him that I didn’t adore and I just really fucking wished that Mikey had introduced me to him a little earlier than shortly before he was going to leave this place for good. 

Gerard sighed again and I looked down at his t-shirt because I didn’t know where else to put my eyes. I just looked at every little detail on the motive until Gerards hand gently lifted my face upwards to him again. The he leaned in and kissed me, and this time it was even better than the first, because this time his tongue playfully parted my lips and his other hand found its way to my other cheek and he pulled me a little closer to him.  
It was like fucking fireworks and butterflies and little explosions inside me because, holy shit, if I had ever tried anything that felt so god damn right as this, I wasn’t aware of it. It was like my whole stupid, indifferent life had lead up to this, and it felt like I melted into Gerard and there was nothing in the whole world beside him and me and our mouths connected and his hands in my hair and mine on his shoulders. 

When Gerard pulled away this time, it was only for air and he smiled at me, but there was still a hint of sadness in his spectacular eyes that I felt like I could look into forever, because he knew just as well as me that this was something we shouldn’t be doing, for the best of both of us. It made my chest ache a little, but not enough to stop kissing him. This was like some magic drug I had needed ever since I finished high school and started living this life that I didn’t actually really want to live. 

‘’’

If making out with Gerard was special, then sex with Gerard was fucking heaven. I found out a few days later when Mikey had another date and me and Gerard were “forced” to spend the night together. 

The other night where we watched Star Wars, we’d spend more than an hour making out on my couch like we were in high school again and when Gerard had gone home his lips had been swollen and pink and he’d had a beard burn because I really needed to shave, and I had jacked off twice that night and fallen asleep with his name on my lips instantly after. 

We didn’t see each other anymore that weekend, but Monday morning, back at work, Gerard kissed me when I arrived, actually in a good mood and not hung over since being with Gerard removed my urge to sex with strangers, and Mikey just rolled his eyes at us. I figured that either he’d guessed it on his own or Gerard had told him about it, because he didn’t comment on it any further, he just cleared his throat loudly and went into his own office and closed the door. 

And then Mikey had another date on Wednesday already, and he and the chick he saw was probably getting quite serious since I’d never seen him have that many dates in less than two weeks. And I almost did a little victory dance when he said he expected me to pick Gerard up around 7, because the last time we’d been alone it had ended up much better than I could imagine, and the quick kisses and hands on thighs and palms ghosting over backs and fingers entwined we’d shared during the past few days was driving crazy because I couldn’t touch him properly.

So I might have been a little more dressed up than I’d been the other times I’d spent the evening with him, and I might have noticed that he was too, because he’d seemed just as full of anticipation as me. And I’d decided to take him out on a restaurant a little fancier than the first one we’d been to. We both got wine this time and somewhere along the meal Gerard slid his foot up my leg and sent me a look that made everything in me stir, because apparently he was not only the most interesting personality I’d ever met. He was also in possession of the dirtiest set of bedroom eyes out of all I had ever seen (which was a lot, actually) and he made them at me right there at the table in the restaurant, and I felt like I was going to pass out.

We didn’t finish the meal. It didn’t take me more than 10 minutes after Gerard started basically eye-fucking me across the table before I gave up and almost tackled the waiter to get the bill and get the fuck home so I could undress him. 

And I did, almost before his back had hit the bed. We could’ve choked on the tension between us on our way home, and climbing the stairs, fiddling with the keys and toeing our shoes off had seems as such slow and unimportant things to do when Gerard was right there and waiting for me.

It felt like my skills in dressing people off slow and sexy and properly had sort of been on standby for the past few years when I hadn’t actually had sex naked because it had all been so rushed and indifferent. This was special. 

And it felt fucking special when I placed myself on top of him, straddling his crotch where I could feel his dick hardening and wiggled off his jacket, tossing it to the side before sliding my hands up underneath his shirt and feeling his skin against mine. I pulled it over his head and threw it somewhere in the same direction as the jacket, and as soon as his torso was naked, I bowed down and crashed my mouth against his, roaming my hands over his body, feeling his smooth stomach and soft hips and when I he made an impatient noise into my mouth I started undoing his belt. 

I pulled down his jeans as much as I could, they were tight and his skin was hot so they stuck around halfway down and Gerard sat up to get them off himself while I used the time off him to get myself undressed. When only in our underwear I climbed back on top of him, kissing him deep again and he tugged at the edge of my boxers, hands eager to get inside. 

I bit my lip and grinned down at him, and he cocked his eyebrow and pushed me down to the side so I was on my back and then mounted me smoothly, before teasingly sliding down the fabric of my boxers, exposing my dick and grabbing it, while still keeping eye contact, giving me that one look and I swore that if he didn’t stop doing that soon I’d come before we even got really started. 

I didn’t thought, and shortly after he’d pushed into me and that thing happened again where I felt like we almost melted together and I moved with him and clung to him and it felt so right. Like it was supposed to be this way, and I hoped so bad that Gerard felt it this way too, because I had never believed in destiny or shit like that before, but it was like little waves of electricity ran through me anywhere that he touched me and I knew that wasn’t something I’d tried before, like ever.

Gerards hair was sticking to his slightly sweaty forehead and low groans escaped his throat as he quickened his pace and my arms slid around the wide of his back and pulled him closer to me. My lips ghosted over his but I was too taken aback from his face and his eyes and the way he moved and his noises to actually kiss him. There was so long from the slightly awkward looking artist in the corner of my office two weeks to this breathtaking man on top of me and holy shit, getting myself into this was simultaneously the best and worst decision ever. I was so screwed but it was worth it, or at least I hoped so, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do when Gerard left, but right now I didn’t care because he was fucking me and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me. 

He came inside me with a loud moan and he reached down to jack me off, and I came way too fast for my own liking, before he pulled out and went to throw the condom in the trash can. I felt empty and in need for him to come back and touch me again because it felt cold when he wasn’t next to me. Oh god, I was really getting needy and far too attached to function properly. 

But he came back and laid down next to me, and I quickly curled up against him and pressed as much of my skin as I possibly could against his, as he leaned in as kissed me sloppily. It wasn’t particularly late but I really felt like I could fall asleep in this very moment like this. 

I hadn’t really had problems sleeping since I’d started spending as much time with Gerard as I had, it was like he had this calming effect on me that took away my need for the drinking and fucking and thinking, and it was like I was constantly high and this was probably what really being in love felt like. 

I didn’t know if I’d been in love with my past girlfriend and boyfriend, at least not until now, because I assumed that this confirmed I hadn’t really. Or maybe this was just different because it definitely felt different, better, more right, and it confused me a lot that I felt so strongly about Gerard and I didn’t really know how to explain it except for destiny, like I was really fucking destined in my life to be in love with Gerard. I still didn’t even know if I believed in things like that, but I didn’t know how to put it otherwise. All I knew was that another week left with Gerard wasn’t enough in any way, but time was running out. And it happened too fast for me to enjoy it properly. 

‘’’

But the days went by whether I liked it or not, and Gerard started spending every night at my place and Mikey just rolled his eyes at us when we showed up at the office together in the mornings. We had an awful lot of sex, and it was the best sex I’d had in my life, partly because Gerard took his time to touch every part of my body and lick all the right places and make me squirm and scream under his hands and beg for more, and partly because it made me feel so close to him, because I’d built up that completely desperate need for him around and I wasn’t completely satisfied until that breathtaking feeling of melting together hit me. 

But we also lay around talking a lot and I could keep on listening to him rambling about everything and nothing for ever and fucking ever. His voice had this enchanting effect on me and being with him made me feel like just a tiny bit of his creativity and knowledge and charisma fell on me, and by the last Friday he had before he took off, I felt like a whole different person. It was like high-school Frank had returned with all his raging emotions, like he had been hibernating somewhere inside me without me knowing, and he was slowly replacing the empty Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde shell that I had become through college. 

And at the same time I managed to be a complete wreck of feelings because Gerard was leaving this fucking weekend, and this felt like the end of a long summer where I’d have to go back from vacation and leave my summer-fling until next year when I’d come back, except this was much worse because I was intensely and passionately in love and I was also the one being left and this was for fucking good.  
I had accompanied Gerard and Mikey back to Mikeys place where Gerard was packing up the little stuff he’d brought from New York into boxes that we carried to the trunk of Mikeys car. 

I almost didn’t take my eyes of Gerard this whole time, the air was thick from unsaid things and he looked maybe half as torn apart as I felt. I couldn’t count the amount of times I’d wanted to just throw whatever I was carrying and drop to my knees in front of him and just cry and beg him to stay, but I didn’t do it, because I knew he wasn’t going to. As much as he felt for me, he already had a place waiting for him in France and a gallery who valued his talent much higher than I ever could, no matter how many nights I spent listening to his passionate talks and he had planned this out for more than a year and he’d known me for barely a month. 

It was ridiculous. Love was ridiculous, and I’d cried my eyes out the night before while he’d been steadily asleep curled up next to me because I had fucking known what I signed up for and still it came over me like a tidal wave of fuck everything and everyone when we stood there looking at the filled car and it apparently was expected of us to just say goodbye like, right here, right now and then no more Gerard. Ever. 

Mikey was driving Gerard to the airport and there wasn’t really space for me in the car too, neither physically or emotionally. I mean, Gerard was saying goodbye to his brother too, not just me, and even though they would probably travel back and forth to see each other at Christmas and family events and such, they still wouldn’t be able to see each other a lot either and they needed their time too. 

So Mikey told us to take all the time we needed and settled to wait in the car. 

At first I just stood there on the pavement with my arms around myself, my lip quivering and trying not to cry though I didn’t really have a choice in the end. Gerard had his eyes on me and the happy spark that had been in there for as long as I’d known him was vanished right now. There was nothing but sorrow and desire and apology. It stung so bad in my chest that it felt like someone was brutally cutting it wide open and removing a part of my insides. Which metaphorically was also sort of true. 

“I don’t know what I’m going to do” I said honestly, the words sounding far too dry for everything I felt as they spread out in the air between us, breaking the silence that had fallen around us. 

“I know. Me neither” he said and his voice was so flat, like he was just as disappointed in fucking fate as I was, angry for not meeting him earlier, angry because the gallery was in France and not just another state, angry because I got attached too easily and angry because I couldn’t tell if Gerard had fallen as hard for me as I had for him. A part of me didn’t hope so because I wouldn’t want him to feel this way, but most of me did hope so because I was selfish and dumb and I had made the first move but he had god damn made the second. 

I wanted to hug him, to close the painful space between us but I didn’t because it would be even more painful to let him go again once our time ran out and he had to go. After another few moments it became too much though, to not feel his arms around me and I almost ran over and crashed myself against him, and he looked sort of shocked when I looked up at him and then tears started dripping down his cheeks and I fucking couldn’t hold it back anymore. A loud sob escaped me and I just clung onto Gerard like my life depended on it, and how would I fucking know that it didn’t, since I had no idea who I would be and what I was doing with my life when he went inside that car and drove off. 

I had been miserable before him, and it was like he’d dragged me out of the deep pit of shit I was in and made something out of me that I didn’t even know I was capable of. I’d been so happy and excited and filled with life and love these past few weeks that even Mikey had dropped a comment on it, saying he could basically see the sun shining out of my ass and it took something for Mikey to notice anything ever. 

“I love you” Gerard said after a while, and even though my stomach dropped at the words that confirmed he was probably going through as much of a storm in his mind that I was, it was incredibly assuring and it just made me cry harder. “Sorry” he continued when he saw the effect the words had on me. 

“Do you believe in destiny?” I asked him through my unrestrained bawling. 

“Sort of” he said with a soft smile that didn’t look happy in any way. “Do you?”

“I do now” I said and I don’t think I’d really realized it before the moment where I said it out loud, but I really fucking believed that this was meant to be, that Gerard was my significant other, my soulmate or whatever, because this was out of the ordinary. This wasn’t just rushed love because I was lonely or sad and he was anxious about going somewhere new. This was something more, so I told him. I blurted it all out and it didn’t sound nearly as romantic as I’d imagined outside my head, it just sounded like the truth. Cold and sad and impossible. 

I ended it all with sobbing “I don’t want you to leave” and it probably didn’t get any more pathetic than that. Fuck, he hadn’t even left yet and the self-loathing was already welling back up in me. 

“But I have to. And I want to” he said and the last sentence was like a slap in the face. I pulled away and looked up at him, feeling all heat leave my body. Gerard suddenly looked shocked at me, like he just realized what he’d said and shook his head. “No, no, it wasn’t supposed to come out like that. I just, I have a much brighter future there, but I wish you’d come with me, I want to leave, I just don’t want to leave you” he said and I felt at least some of the warmth return to me. I didn’t hug him again though. I just looked at him, sort of expecting him to say something more. He didn’t though. 

“I can’t do that” I said and shook my head regretfully. He’d mentioned it once before and I’d dismissed the idea quickly then too, and he hadn’t brought it up again since. 

“But why not?” he asked and looked as desperate as I felt, a tiny glimpse of hope brightening up his face. 

“I don’t- I just can’t” I said harshly and the truth was I was scared shitless. If I left my steady job and my shitty apartment that smelled like puke and went somewhere new where I couldn’t speak the language and didn’t know anybody except for Gerard I wouldn’t know what to do. It was like I wouldn’t have that safety net underneath me that I had now where I had a job that paid the rent and could go get drunk if things got too much and continue into a downwards spiral until I could retire in another 30 year and die lonely. Okay, that was actually a pretty shitty safety net, but it was all I knew none the less, and Gerard had turned it all upside down, but the thought of leaving all that I had for him was still terrifying. 

“You don’t want to” he corrected me and his voice hadn’t the tiny hopefulness I’d seen on his face a second ago. “You just want to stay here and return to the drinking and fucking like you’ve done for the last many years because you know you can do that. It’s just that I know you better, or at least I think I do. The alcohol and the sex isn’t the only thing you can do Frank. You’re more than that. You just have to dare trusting yourself” he said dryly, and I knew he was right, but it didn’t stop the way my heart was pounding rapidly against my ribcage and the way I was getting slightly nauseous. 

“I love you. I love you so much I’m not even gonna start explaining it. I’m just-“ I started but he cut me off. 

“Scared?” he asked with a cocked eyebrow. 

“Yeah” 

“Hell, Frank, what do you think I am? I’m moving to a country where I only speak the language to a household need, and I leave my family, my home, my friends, everything. It’s not like I’m just waltzing into this with a straight face and cold blood. But it would help a whole fucking lot if you were there with me” he said and I noticed another tear running from his eye and dripping down to his shirt.

His word hit me with such strength that I thought I was going to fall over. I hadn’t really thought of it like that before, because Gerard seemed so calm and in control of things and I hadn’t seen him freak out like this one single time, unlike me, who freaked out all the fucking time over basically anything; spiders, breaking a plate, someone staring at me on the street, the future, the present, my fucking life and everything about it. But he looked scared right now, small and fragile and away from home, with tears on his face and that made me freak out too. See, it was things like this that made me sure I wasn’t capable of moving to another continent without going mad. 

But then again, I was going mad here too, and it was a thousand times better going mad next to Gerard than here, on my own. 

“Come with me. Please. I’m scared too, and I need you” he said with a tiny voice I could feel everything inside of me fall apart, I was so torn between what seemed safe and what I really, actually wanted deep inside, because I was a dumb coward with no willpower. But I was also a dumb coward with no willpower in love, and the last three words he said filled me with something warm and fuzzy. I needed him too. 

‘’’

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mikey asked with a disbelieving grimace, hands on the wheel and his mouth hanging slightly open. He looked rather funny, actually, but I had enough on my mind already to concentrate on laughing at him. 

“Not really” Gerard said with a shrug. We were standing outside the open door to the passenger seat, both of us still with tears down our faces, our fingers entwined and serious expressions. “The plane isn’t leaving until in the middle of the night, there’s plenty of time” 

“No there’s not” Mikey said and his voice got a little high pitched and squeaky and that made me giggle a little. “We can’t possibly have time enough to go back to your place and wait for you to settle your shit. Do you even know how long it takes to plan something like this?” he pointed at me and looked more and more out of it as he spoke. 

“Well, then I’ll just have to set a new speed record for packing stuff and calling my mom and being yelled at” I said and I was sort of out of breath from the adrenaline pumping through me, still crying but out of something else now, my chest rising and falling violently, and my fingers clenching hard around Gerards. I had never been this nervous before in my life, and I was probably going to vomit my guts out sooner or later, but then again my bathroom already smelled like puke so what fucking ever, I wasn’t ever going to use it again. I was going to France.


End file.
